(For Tracy Michele, who always reads them first.)

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

(Metropolitan Museum exhibition - The Path of Nature: French Paintings  from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785-1850.) [Notes from April 11, 2013] Re. The Giralda, Seville by Adrian Dauzats: without laboring over minute details, Dauzats gives us indications of various shifts in the color of masonry; the cobalt blue of the sky shows up in the shadows, especially effective where it meets up against the soft cream-colored plaster of the upper structures; soft edges, and allowance for how the trailing of the brush suggests surfaces, are all things I have to learn from as a painter. A really fine sense of balance between the general and the specific creates all these beautiful little forms.

^ The Giralda, Seville. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. ca.1836/37. Adrien Dauzats (b.1804-d.1868). 


Re. The Gate to the Temple of Luxor by Antoine-Xavier-Gabriel de Gazeau: a humid sky shifts between subtle shifts of whitish hues --- slightly gray blue, white, slightly yellow ochre white.

^ The Gate to the Temple of Luxor. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. 1836. Antoine-Xavier-Gabriel de Gazeau, comte de La Bouëre (b.1801-d.1881).


Re. Cloud Study (Distant Storm), by Simon Denis: For most of the cloud's edges, the end of the brush was allowed to point outward, creating a feathery edge, instead of using the side of the brush to create a hard edge; a huge amount of sky and cloud formation is held within these small measurements (maybe 8x10"?).

^ Cloud Study (Distant Storms). Oil on paper. ca.1786-1806. Simon Denis (b.1755-d.1813).


Re. Mountainous Landscape at Vicovaro, by Simon Denis: Simon Denis is perfect; straight forward and direct with a keen sense of tone;  all the air and light and grandeur of the place fills his little paintings.
"Each day he painted or drew on the spot, always in a different place; and, in this fashion, he learned, as he himself said, to make studies by making pictures, and to make pictures by making studies." - Joseph Bidauld, french painter, b.1758-d.1846.

^ Mountainous Landscape at Vicovaro. Oil on paper.  ca.1786-97. Simon Denis (b.1755-d.1813).


Re. View in the Gardens of the Villa d'Este, by Léon Pallière: simplicity; all hues toned down (no #1 tone --- pure white); I have read of palettes which included no blues but, rather, black serves the place of it with the very lightest gray (it would need to be a cool black then, not a warm black); this could be an example; how much we are told about the pool's structure in the foreground with only a few simple shapes, carefully calibrated tones, and the drag of the brush; again, no sharp edges, no straight edges, no hard angles; imperfections aid in description and create naturalness.

^ View in the Gardens of the Villa d'Este. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. ca.1814-17.  Léon Pallière (b.1787-d.1820).


Re. Mountainous Landscape with Bridge, by Eugène-Joseph Verboeckhoven: dramatic use of light hitting pale, massive cliff wall places our attention on the foreground, framed dramatically on either side in other shadowed, steep formations, with masonry protruding like a ridge up the right bank; this light is repeated back further, at its source --- the early evening sun, soft and warm with some faint rosy tone, behind the foreground outcrop; evening light quickly transferring to pale baby blue but the shift is so subtle; distant hills dissolve away from their nearer sibling into soft soft violet grays with no edge, no interruption, the light melts ridges where atmosphere lay.

Mountainous Landscape with Bridge. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. ca.1820s? Eugène-Joseph Verboeckhoven (b.1798-d.1801)

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